How England's Oldest Road Was Nearly Lost Forever 

Thank you for the update!

ok

Nice!

Why as the human being you have so much passion?

I've got to go to England some day to hike these old paths.

oh it gets so crusty

And thanks to tom I know that now!

I thought it was my stupid internet connection

Thanks to Tom, we know whom to blame 😂

Drives me nuts

This is me haha, I‘d much rather walk most of the time instead of being dropped off. I’ve begrudgingly started riding a bike and am enjoying it, but few things beat walking

Trust me, they exist...

Anyone with a crumb of enthusiasm in this country is seen as militant.

They've existed for a while alongside the militant cyclists. The common name for them now is "Karen" ... People who *know* that their pet cause trumps all else.

There's a long history of militant ramblers in the UK

Fascinating!

That wouldn’t happen to be the penny ferry in Thelwall would it?

The big Musik that’s right. I believe there is a similar ferry at Irlam, but I’ve never used it.

I live literally about a 5 minute walk away from that, just near the Infant School

gammaphonic can I just ask why by now they haven’t just built a bridge?

I believe militant walking is called "marching".

@@ianmelzer i read that as "militant wa*king"...whoops

@@warbler1984 Don't let your dreams be dreams.

[redacted]

These days, everyone's a militant enthusiast of something. There are hardly regular old enthusiasts anymore.

Oh please. 😁 I thought my jokes were bad...👍😆

England does have "right to roam" in many places - this was another key portion of the Countryside and Rights of Way Act put in (The CRoW act). It creates what's known as CRoW land, in which the public have a right to roam and camp in. National parks such as the Lake District and the North Pennines are nearly entirely CroW land.

Indeed, you need to distinguish the statutory "right to roam" from the common law rules regarding rights of way. The two exist side by side. The statutory right to roam is similar in Scotland and England, but, although local authorities in Scotland do maintain a map showing rights of way, these do not appear on Ordnance Survey maps (as they di in England) and there is no cut off date as discussed in the video.

Without what?

It makes total sense in such an underpopulated country.

it's one of the biggest reasons i love my country so much

It started mainly with the dirt bike and greenlane crowd around 2015

British Horse Society? Sign me up.

We're all in the same boat, save the paths & bridleways ! B.H.S. have ways to volunteer & help with the project

@@bartholomewdan Ok, Tina.

Needless to say they aren't horsing around! 🤣

Also, just checked your only video. Loved it. You earned a sub

^ Added to watch later and subbed

yea, he's very good at that in his videos.

I feel someone is not realising that shooting someone and being put in prison for murder is not easier than just making your own 'keep out private land -trespassers will be shot' sign...I've seen those before. I'm not going to obey the footpath sign when that's there... let's hope was a warning shot into the air.

Most farmers just stick their biggest bull in the fields closest to the start of the footpath

Farmers are bellends.

@@michaelgeorgesaupe7059 Even accusations of a warning shot being fired would warrant a visit from your firearms enquiry officer, and they would probably not be very happy.

Hope you reported it to the council !

Woah! That's amazing! Can't even imagine that as a US resident.

Similar laws in Scotland I think bar the camping

Same here in Finland, you can walk anywhere as long as it's not in the middle of someones garden or an actively cultivated field. The whole concept of designated right of way seems really odd to me.

same in Germany, called Betretungsrecht (right to enter) every forrest or open field you have the right to enter and use the roads. Nobody can put a fence around that.

@@philippm.1271 But we're not allowed to camp without explicit permission of the land owner in Germany.

Someone planted a tree on a path to stop people walking it and my grandma protested and got it taken down

@@darthvader2994 That seems.... inefficient, and cruel. Did they plant a sapling and guard it from being trampled for several years while it grew big enough to block the path? Did they buy it, dig it up, and move it in from somewhere else with its entire root system while nobody was watching? How big was this tree that it could interfere with walking on the path? Wouldn't it just offer more shade and encourage walking? Did anybody ask whether the tree was okay with this, or explain to it why it had to be "taken down"?

I'm not too far from the Macclesfield area. There's a farmer who keeps on leaving their dog out near the public footpath, causing me to walk around the path and onto their own field. Then the pumpkinhead has a go at me for walking on their field >:(

@@neolexiousneolexian6079 some of these paths arent wide enough for two people to walk side by side. if they arent walked in the summer they can be lost till next winter. also you can buy and plant older trees not just saplings. i have a public footpath behind my house and the dog literally disappears for a few hundred yards everytime time we walk it because the grass is long. but itll die back in winter.

@@Phambleton Get something to defend yourself from the dog with, if it attacks you must have legal cause to kill it, even in the UK.

Comment: *_2 Days Ago_* Video: *_21 Seconds Ago_* T-Shirt: *_Red_* *_And this is how you know that this is a Tom Scott Video_*

Hello tom! I love ur video!

Hmm

Hello Tom

Tom Hi

And much like electricity, it follows the path of least resistance

Where can I read more about this person?

@@big5709 I'm guessing this is 20th c. Chinese writer Zhou Shu'ren, better known by the pseudonym Lu Xun

This is not totally true, in a lot of places people followed animal trails!

"The road becomes as you walk it." - Norwegian proverb

They probably meant that hunts take place there and you shouldn’t enter because it can happen that you are mistaken for game or something. Many European countries have a more liberal right of way where any land is accessible by default unless it is a garden or fenced off to due to being dangerous.

There is no truly ancient woodland in England, it was all logged in the middle ages.

​@@taowroland8697 so 400 years old doesn't qualify as "ancient" in your book?

@@myladycasagrande863 no.

@@myladycasagrande863 we have an Aspen grove in the U.S. over 40,000 years old. Some forests have a good number of trees that are 6,000 years old. I have an oak on my property older than any English tree.

I like that word: Microtoponyms. I think this is a program the British should copy. As short a time as I have lived in this country, I am aware of place names like this that I hear from people my age that are from here, but my child who has grown up here does not know, because most of his classmates aren't from here and don't use them.

@@NilZed1 I'm glad you liked that. If you have the time, maybe you could talk to local English teachers or cultural/neighbour organisations to think it through and try to start some project at a local level, with your council.

@ilikeminecraft6753 gaming Pois deixa de craftear e comeza a nomear!

Not one, so that narrows it down.

And it was made up by GIs stationed in the area...

Wie weit im Süden?

Does that translate to 'romantic street'? Sounds appealing. Also, I'm sure Germany respects the public's right to enjoy walking in nature more than elsewhere

Must be a bugger when you’re just about to start dinner and a walking group comes through your house 🤪

Niko Bellic we do have some kind of Freedom to roam, not for anyone’s back garden, but forests and the like

Or went from a farm to a place that used to be a local pub.

@@bdf2718 Where I live it rather was the own wine cellar on the hillside just outside the village - much cheaper and open all the time :D

a lot of the ones in my area are old routes to coal mines and shafts.

Someone in my hometown did similar. A few people actually, but one wrote the books about it. Also wrote as thurough history as he could about the development of the area; not as difficult as it might sound since the town was created in the 1940s and wasn't very big, but when someone's old vents were breaking down it was neat to look up which neighbors had houses built by the same folks at the same time to give them a heads up.

Time to install a game camera I'm thinking...

*as a militant walking enthusiast

if I where a landowner, I'd just install Apiaries. 1, you get Bees, which means 2, you get honey, and flowers! 3, nobody's going anywhere NEAR those things. Walking people never bothered me, it was folks using pit bikes and ATVs in my area. some of the land owners eventually just resorted to putting high-tensile fishing line at head level.

@@DFX2KX These scum should be prosecuted for attempted murder. And I say it as someone who hates morons destroying land with quads.

@@DFX2KX We have knee guards and elbow guards, and even shin guards. In the near future, we will have neck guards for cycling, at this rate.

Ignore the signs, then report them when you get home. And if you see the landowner, dance around the path whilst swearing at them.

We have certainly found that people have been exploring and enjoying their local paths and green spaces during these difficult months. People are connecting with the joy of walking!

Yup! Whilst people have been crowding beauty spots, I’ve enjoyed finding miles of scenic walking routes with no people about. It’s been great.

No

@@Mr-Damage 🙁

Good luck in that fight. Especially seeing tory troglodytes are much more likely to delete old rights, not to add new ones, especially if it benefits the rich...

yup, even things you might feel are silly or small arent a guarantee. someone, somewhere, fought for that right (probably illegally) and eventually managed to get change made

> Even walking along public footpaths, has required years and years of action like those militant walking enthusiasts at the Kinder Trespass, doing at least some form of law-breaking and protest. Don't forget the Vixen Tor mass trespass.

You often see on OS Maps where the course of old Roman Roads lay, but are not always public rights of way. When these run through fields you can sometime see the crop marks, on satellite images, left by the outline of the roman roads

@@michaelgeorgesaupe7059 What if the rambler damages plants that belong to someone? What if those plants are endangered? (Like I'm fairly sure the latter is a crime, but I'm curious as to the legal responsibility in general)

@@pavarottiaardvark3431 A path near me goes diagonally across a field. Each year, the farmer plants all new crops, and as they grow, a line is carved through them by people walking along that path. The farmer has no recourse. It's a public right of way.

Look at the Amazon rainforest. Cities from the 1700’s of 20,000+ are STILL being uncovered.

@@d2xr Good thing we are clearing the rainforest. jk jk that was a really bad joke.

Korenn British law is weird that way. Parliament doesn’t like passing laws that conflict with previous laws all that much, and they definitely don’t want to give and then take away the right to any given piece of land.

Sure it's possible for the government to declare more land "Right of way" after that deadline. But all of the existing yet undocumented "Right of way" land will stop being considered such, even if you can find proof of it after that deadline. As was mentioned land owners are not always fans of having people walk on their land, and governments wanting to appease land owners are thus unlikely to declare more land as "Right of way" unless they have to. They are also unlikely to extend the deadline for the same reason. That's why it's important to fix the map before the deadline, the government is forced to update the map if the evidence presented is accurate, regardless of whether landowners agree to it or not.

@@dragonflyK110 This isn't *exactly* true. Courts still will have the power to decide whether or not, on the historical evidence, a right of way or an easement exists on an estate. It just means that every inch of path will have to be fought over in court (with potentially 15 parties for a one mile stretch) rather than through registration to a defined committee. As I understand it now, if you find a path with historical right of way, you register it, and if the landowners disagree then it is their role to challenge the registration. Thus, they have all the initial fees of the challenge. Once the deadline ends, instead of that, someone (like the Rambler charity mentioned in this vid) would have to cough up funding to take a landowner to court to try forcing them to open up that path. Because of the case law we already have, once you've managed to force a landowner to open up an established right of way, they can't close it again; it becomes a known quantity, equivalent to registration on the rights of way map. The end of the deadline will have the effect of making rights of way open up so prohibitively expensive, but not actually impossible. That's not exactly great either, but still, it is good to know that the mechanism is in place.

@@wulfherecyning1282 I see, thank you for that clarification. I was under the impression the government was essentially rescinding the "Right of way" on land that had not been openly documented as such before the deadline, but am happy to be corrected. That is indeed good news, as it means all hope is not lost after the deadline. Though knowing how expensive court proceeding can get I sadly don't have much confidence that a charity like The Ramblers will be able to get much done once it gets to that point. So it makes sense they would consider it the end of the road as far as their powers are concerned.

They may have to stretch it. Budget cuts in the local councils meant the rights of way departments didn’t always have enough staff and so the definitive map was paused and then they often had to redo old work to get the project going again.

There is also a "byway" that you can walk/cycle/ride/drive down as with any public road and a "restricted byway" where you can do the same except no mechanically propelled vehicles like cars.

I agree.

@@bunnywarren people forget about byways. I'm a honest respectful green-laner but always get so and so's filming my number plate as if I'm not allowed to be there

The difference between a footpath and a bridleway is that you have to watch your step on a bridleway.

Pedal cycles are also permitted on bridleways. There are also "permissive paths", which are explicitly not public rights of way, but where the landowner permits some public use while retaining the option of withdrawing that permission. Read the signs to find out which activities are permitted on these paths.

I know that feeling to well.

Same here

If you want to feel productive you want some of my homework

Yet having a 5% done essay due tomorrow. Procrastination😎

Its the perfect way to procastinate on actual work 👌

DofE in south east england has to be one of the most confusing things that any teen can go through, I never realised how many paths there were in the country til I did DofE

ALA_Legend 02 can confirm, it’s hilariously confusing 😂

ALA_Legend 02 I did mine in the peak district, and damn there’s tons there too!

ThatOneEnemy my gold expedition (before it was cancelled was going to be in the Peak District, I look forward to it!

And thus, you have educated yourself. Teachers, take notes.

I live in north Essex and never have a problem walking footpaths round here. There's a lot of dodgy new money round Billericay so maybe it's just that area

Canada doesn’t have the same kind of legislation, but we do have the same common law of easements. There are footpaths just like this in many parts of Canada.

Always has been

Suits me fine. I like looking at the scenery.

Very comfy and kino. The U.K. outside the cities is such a wonderful place.

Lots of people missed the joke...

I walk a lonely road,

ugghh that tearing

Came to the comments to point that out. Also the encoding of this video looks very bad. Seems there is a key frame every few seconds but not a high enough bitrate, causing a blurry mess every few seconds to be jarringly cleaned up by key frames.

@@DavidAPayt its also just terrible autofocus

@@jorgepeterbarton No. That's definitely not a focus related issue. Definitely bitrate

@@EoRdE6 3:46 isn't a bitrate issue either, look at it frame by frame. Each individual frame is clear. It seems to be some kind of rendering error where every other frame is the previous frame, causing a very fast zig-zag effect.

in Germany you can walk everywhere even in a house. If you don't want that you need a fence with an looked door.

@@philippm.1271 That's a good way to get shot where I come from.

Practically nobody cares about it though because trespass isn't a criminal offense providing you don't break things or cause distress

Same in Sweden, even the name of the right is the same, though here we're being told how uniquely swedish it is 🤔

Same here in the Netherlands, there is no law against entering somebody else their property, unless it's locked or has and specific warning listen the article of law that you can't enter that place. So technically if somebody leaves their door open you can enter there house legally, but you always have to leave somebody's land if the owner says so to you in person. And ofcourse breaking and entering is illegal

Did it have an ickle pub and lots of ickle houses?

Sounds icky.

@@tonetoobtwo not too many. It's a tiny place. :D

Did it have a river called the river Ickle?

Just north of Hitchin Hertfordshire. Not a lot there, pub, church, village shop and houses

Yup, he's missed the section roughly followed by the B4009.

Does Tom do anything without intention?

Honestly, using both is the superior way.

I mean, being on RU-vid, only using kilometres would just confuse American viewers, so it isn't necessarily representative of everyday usage of the different units.

@@tonydai782 Also the UK officially uses imperial measurements on roads, despite all other official measurements being in metric.

Damn already got some pedants here. Hey pedants, hope your doing good! :)

What are the criteria to have it deregistered?

Wow, that's about the size of my bedroom in Australia and by our standards l live in a fairly small house. The living space for many people in London is insanely tiny.

damn, that's the size of my flat. Single bedroom, a cupboard, a desk with a minifridge, and a bathroom that doubles as kitchen. It's a bit cramped, but quite alright if you dont expect to do anything in the room aside from sleep, shower, and use the computer

@@ChemySh that really is nuts. I pulled out a tape measure, my bedroom is around 10sq metres, but that's just the one l sleep in, there are two spare rooms one of which is over twice the size of my bedroom a living room, kitchen, seperate toilet, laundry and porch and l live on my own. As l said before, this is a small residence by Australian standards, many flats/units are bigger than this and lm always annoyed l have a lack of space to put stuff. How anyone can live in such a tiny space is beyond me. I love London and feel very much at home when l visit, but how anyone could live like that...

@@Jake12220 I also see it as nuts that people living alone can fill all those spaces with their stuff. Why would you need that much stuff, I often wonder. On the other side of nuts, I once visited my friend's place in Hongkong. 14 square meter for a dining room, living room (sofa and a tv), kitchen, 2 bedrooms, and 1 bathroom, combined. It's actually quite comfy and encourages you to keep that belly small (seriously, his flat's that small)

Hmhmm. My 60m² flat + 4m² balcony feesl 'right' between "too small" and "too large". It is a bit on the larger then average side (and is really intended for 2 persons), but I like to have a separate bedroom, a separate living room and a seperate kitchen. Down to 40m² would be just so acceptable, but only if it were at least two separate rooms.

brb, gotta find out who killed my dad

Eir Aoi is top tier.

Lmao

I can’t see that being practical in a country as densely populated as the Uk

@@finlaybullough499 I think it could work in more rural areas of the country, perhaps if different counties could have different systems or something

@@radiocative6296 Tom doesn't mention the other thing that the Countryside and Rights of Way Act put in (The CRoW act). It creates what's known as CRoW land, in which the public have a right to roam and camp in. National parks such as the Lake District and the North Pennines are nearly entirely CroW land.

In rural parts of the UK (National Parks, Scotland) this is the case already

A lot of environmentalists would argue that just by walking you're damaging the land. That's sounds like it was maybe a good idea before people gave a crap about the environment

Viva Britannia is probably not a great thing to say

Boring Name it’s to french

They need to be milltant to offset the illegal actions of landowners.

James Dyson

sounds like a title of a CGP grey video

Don't move back here! We're being ripped apart by the conservatives. There'll be nothing left soon.

The UK is a shattered mess. Brexshit has torn the country apart and the tory kleptocricy is gutting what's left.

why

For real, that was my only reaction to this video

You dont have public roads in America?

@@InShortSight We don't have foot paths that could be passing through your backyard. Here thats YOUR private property, that you and only you have say over. And in some situations HoA's, but that's different. You certainly don't buy property only to have some people come by 5 years later and say "Oh yea, there used to be a trail here a hundred years ago, sorry you have no recourse." And if the government decides they need your land for public roads/infrastructure they at least pay you for the trouble.(Most of the time, some times they screw people over. But hey, government sucks in general, ours just sucks less)

@@davetremaine9763 idiot u ddint even watch the video, same applies to usa ,if u buy land and is a path between it thats public u domt then own the path

So can I just stroll through your garden in Scotland or does it have to a historic site?

'gardens around houses'

@@warbler1984 That would likely be classed as intruding on someone's privacy, and so is an exception :)

Trespass isn't a criminal offence in England, unless the the land owner has requested otherwise, and even then it's only a civil offence.

Technically so does England it's just much more restrictive on the types of land that it applies to (which is why public rights of way are still relevant)

Same in finland

Does that mean "Everyone's roads"?

@@peksn the every man's right, roughly

@@peksn It allows you to walk and camp almost anywhere, not only on roads.

Seolferwulf - problem I've found in Scotland are the livestock fences, sometimes very tricky to get over. At least with public footpaths and bridleways there are mandatory gates or stiles.

We love this book!

*You're.

@@RonaldReaganRocks1 bet your fun at partys

@@altzu badum tish

It's the internet. Someone would have.

Do you really expect anything less of the consummate professional that is Tom Scott

His channel is a business. Just like companies always cover their asses, Tom must, too.

It does nobody any harm, and covers his ass. Why's that a bit much?